Social- And Excitement Motives Of Spectators Attendingh Entertainment Sport Events`

Introduction
This paper report on the development of the Entertainment Sport Motivation Scale (ESMS), and how the experience of
an event differs between sports and social groups related to sex, age, and education. The study contribute to the
understanding of why so many people choose to attend entertainment sport events, defined as professionalized athletic
events with athletes representing spectators, who in turn identify with athletes and consume sport in order to obtain
satisfaction from the social contacts and arousal of affects.

Methods
Participants (N=399) in this study where spectators at two different sport events: soccer and ski jumping. The mean age
for soccer spectators was 36,3 years (SD=12,3), and 34,5 years (SD=12,8) for the ski jump spectators. 60,3% of the
soccer spectators and 64,2% of the ski jump spectators where male. Surveyors were randomly assigned a block of the
stands where they distributed questionnaires to spectators. The eight items of the ESMS were subjected to principal
component analysis with Varimax rotation. Internal reliability analyses were performed on the factors and on the total
ESMS. One-way ANOVA was used to compare scores on the ESMS among male and female spectators, and between
sports. A two-way between-groups analysis of variance was conducted to explore the impact of age and education on
social and excitement motives.

Results
Principal components analysis revealed the presence of two components with eigenvalues over 1. Checking the global
reliability of the ESMS produced a Chronbach’s alpha of .78. Soccer-spectators scored significantly higher on both
social- and excitement motives, compared with the ski-jump spectators. Compared to male spectators, female ski jump
spectators scored higher on social motives. There was a statistically significant main effect for education on both social
motives [F(3, 383)=6,20, p=.001] and excitement motives [F(3, 383)=8,89, p<.001]. The main effect for age reached
statistical significance on social motives [F(3, 383)=14,82, p<.001).

Discussion/ Conclusions
This study support sociability and excitement as meaningful dimensions in spectators’ experience of entertainment sport.
There are only small differences between male and female spectators concerning the importance of social and excitement
motives. There are more profound differences between sport events, and between different social groups related to age and
education. Large differences between sport events indicate limitations when generalizing results to other entertainment sport
events.

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